You are here

Home > News & Events > Hashmi in the Washington Post: "Not What The Prophet Would Want, How Can Islamic Scholars Sanction Suicidal Tactics?"

Hashmi in the Washington Post: "Not What The Prophet Would Want, How Can Islamic Scholars Sanction Suicidal Tactics?"

Monday, June 10, 2002 - 12:00pm

This opinion piece ran in The Washington Post
on Sunday, June 9, 2002

For months, a chorus of Western leaders has joined the Israeli
government in demanding that Yasser Arafat condemn Palestinian
suicide bombings, and that he do so in Arabic. But Wednesday's
attack at Megiddo, and several others during the past three weeks,
demonstrate that no matter how loudly or in what language Arafat
condemns the attacks, they will continue.

The emphasis on Arafat and his Palestinian Authority is
misplaced, for what drives the bombers is not just a volatile
combination of frustration, hatred and political ambition, but the
potent sanction of religion. It is the religious scholars as much
as the bomb makers who are responsible for sending young men and
women -- often impressionable teenagers -- on their murderous
missions with promises of a martyr's reward. Religious imagery and
justifications suffuse the videotaped "suicide notes" of even the
al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, an offshoot of Arafat's generally secular
Fatah organization. When a BBC interviewer recently suggested to
Hamas spokesman Mahmoud Zahhar that his group's tactics were
nothing but murder, Zahhar retorted, "That's not the opinion of our
Islamic scholars."

Zahhar's generalization is only partially correct. The upsurge
in suicide attacks as the preferred tactic of groups claiming to be
Islamic warriors has sparked controversy among some of the leading
interpreters of Islamic law.Most scholars of any standing were
quick to condemn the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States as
contrary to Islamic injunctions to spare noncombatants. But as has
happened many times in the past, excuses and exceptions have been
made in the Palestinians' war against Israel. The popular Egyptian
scholar Sheik Yusuf Qaradawi, now based in Qatar, strongly
condemned the terrorist attacks against American civilians. Yet
last December he publicly challengedSheik Mohammed Sayed Tantawi,
the rector of Egypt's al-Azhar university and mosque, for
condemning the killing of innocents in Israel.

Reflecting this turmoil in intellectual circles, a meeting of
the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference ended in early
April with a communique pledging Muslim support for the war against
terrorism, but -- under pressure from Arab members -- rejecting
"any attempt to link terrorism to the struggle of the Palestinian
people." In the wake of Israel's military actions in the West Bank
and Gaza, Muslim voices to the contrary have fallen silent.

It is simplistic to lump the Palestinian terrorists with al
Qaeda in terms of their motivations or how to deal with them. Only
the most morally obtuse would deny the genuine suffering of the
Palestinian people during the past 60 years or the legitimacy of
their demand for a state. But it isn't simplistic to argue that
their methods and the destruction they cause are morally equivalent
to al Qaeda's terrorism, and, no matter how different the
circumstances or justifications, that they amount to murder. This
conclusion is supported by the long and rich tradition of Islamic
moral reasoning on martyrdom and war. It is time for the Muslim
scholars who hold this view to tap Islamic resources to develop and
sustain a clear moral position that unambiguously renounces the
deliberate targeting of civilians.

Suicide bombings challenge two fundamental principles of Islamic
ethics: the prohibitions against suicide and the deliberate killing
of noncombatants. Suicide for any reason has been strongly
condemned throughout Islamic history and its practice is extremely
rare in Islamic societies. In the context of war, however, the line
between suicide and combat is often extremely fine and easily
crossed. Just as some Americans still commemorate the "suicidal"
military exploits of the defenders of the Alamo or Gen. George
Pickett's division at Gettysburg, so Muslims honor many a doomed
struggle, most famously perhaps the challenge of the prophet's
grandson Husayn to the Umayyad caliph. Husayn's stand against all
odds at Karbala in 680 has made him the "prince of martyrs" for
both Shiites and Sunnis.

Yet the prophet Muhammad, the principal exemplar of Islamic
ethics (including military ethics), clearly sought to draw a line
separating martyrdom in battle from suicide. According to several
reports, the prophet repudiated those who deliberately took their
own lives in the course of battle, even the soldier suffering from
severe wounds. The Muslim fighter enters battle not with the
intention of dying, but with the conviction that if he should die,
it is for reasons beyond his control. Martyrdom is the will of God,
not humans.

Suicide bombers cross another line clearly drawn in Islamic
military ethics when they intentionally set out to kill civilians.
Again, numerous traditions of the prophet establish the principle
that noncombatants, especially women and children, are not to be
directly targeted.

At the same time, Muslim theorists have long recognized the
possibility of "collateral damage" and excused Muslim fighters who
unintentionally kill noncombatants in the course of military
operations. But the Muslim scholars who defend Palestinian bombers
can hardly raise the issue of collateral damage when it is apparent
that families eating in a pizzeria or riding a bus are themselves
direct targets. So they have turned to other justifications, such
as the argument that every Israeli is involved in the oppression
and killing of Palestinians because they are citizens who support
their state, or that every Israeli adult is a potential soldier.
They are saying, in effect, that in Israel, there are no
civilians.

These contentions, however, cannot be reconciled with Islamic
teachings on discriminating between those who are fighting and
those who are not. How is the random targeting of people in a hotel
or a marketplace a blow against Israeli military occupation? Nor
can these contentions be reconciled with Islam's rejection of the
idea of collective responsibility. How are teenagers in a disco or
a baby in a stroller responsible for the alleged crimes of "their"
government?

Another argument frequently made by Muslim scholars is that of
reciprocity. As Sheik Ahmed Yassin, leader of Hamas, has repeatedly
said, "As long as they target our civilians, we will target their
civilians." No doubt Israel's occupation and attacks have inflicted
terrible civilian casualties, if not through direct targeting, then
through the disproportionate use of force, such as sending tanks
against boys throwing stones or using helicopter gunships to
assassinate suspected militants and to bomb targets in heavily
populated areas.

But the justification of suicide bombings as retaliation is a
curious moral position, if it can be called that at all. It not
only abnegates moral responsibility, it also effectively demolishes
the ethical underpinning of the jihad tradition, which is that
Muslims behave according to the dictates of divine law, not in
response to the actions of their enemies. The argument for
reciprocity is generally made on the basis of Koranic verses such
as, "Fight the polytheists all together as they fight you all
together" (9:36). The scholars who cite this verse usually fail to
consider its historical context, as well as how it ends: "But know
that God is with those who restrain themselves."

Leaving aside the principled objections, suicide bombings also
must be rejected because of the adverse consequences that result
from them. Again, Muslims hold that there is no greater exemplar of
the military strategist or tactician than the prophet himself. He
was no leader of a suicide cult. What stands out clearly from the
prophet's actions is his flexibility and adaptability to changing
circumstances. For the first 12 years of his mission, he pursued a
policy of nonviolent resistance grounded in principle and prudence.
For the next 10 years, he did not hesitate to fight when required,
but he also continued to use nonviolent means when appropriate,
including diplomacy and tactical retreat. Above all, his policies
demonstrate an abiding concern for the welfare of the people he
led, not just in their immediate, individual circumstances, but
also in their evolution as a community.

The Palestinians who defend suicide bombings -- or terrorism in
general -- must ask themselves if their tactic is yielding any
result except death and misery for themselves and the Israelis, not
to mention an erosion of international confidence in their
willingness to live peacefully within their own state. Beyond that,
they must ask what type of nation they hope to become. The way
people struggle against oppression determines in large part what
type of nation they will be once they are free. The Algerian
struggle against French colonialism saw atrocities committed by all
parties, leaving a fractured society and polity once the occupiers
had left. The wounds from that liberation struggle festered into
the gruesome civil war of today.

Finally, those Muslim scholars who justify Palestinian terrorism
must weigh the consequences of any exception to the rule against
killing innocents. If young Palestinians are justified in strapping
bombs to themselves and killing randomly in Israel, then it isn't a
far stretch for young Egyptians and Saudis to crash civilian
airplanes into skyscrapers in the name of Islam. Once the rule
against killing innocents is breached, what comes next? The use of
anthrax or nuclear weapons? If Muslims are to excuse these acts,
then they might as well discard the centuries-long tradition of
moral reflection on jihad and instead embrace the idea that harb
(war) is hell.

Sohail Hashmi teaches international relations at Mount Holyoke
College in Massachusetts.